… perhaps the deep currents towards organizational democracy will continue ?
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… to recognize that social software is used to communicate and build information between people … even people at work.
Via ZDNet …
RSS: The new intranet protocol?
In a story he headlined Web 2.0 sews grassroots collaboration, CNET News.com’s Martin LaMonica wrote:
Like others, Seely Brown expects to see a wide range of techniques common on consumer Web applications–including blogs, collaborative Web page editing through wikis, tagging and RSS (Really Simple Syndication)-based subscriptions–to bleed into mainstream business applications….new Web standard products could push people to stop using e-mail to share documents and instead collaborate through shared workspaces like wikis….The onus is back on the incumbent providers, especially IBM and Microsoft, to (react). This stuff is beyond good enough, and it’s easy to work with," [said Burton Group analyst Peter O'Kelly].
LaMonica’s story goes on to say that Microsoft is responding by building wiki functionality into a forthcoming version of its Sharepoint collaboration technology. LaMonica also picked up on this zinger:
"This way of capturing collaborative wisdom, collective knowledge is a different take on knowledge management, which was fundamentally flawed" [said IBM Lotus Division general manager Michael Rhodin].
Tags: collaboration, building knowledge, social software, knowledge management
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You may have noticed, in the blog post announcing the Qumana new version release, the following new feature.
- YouTube support (’embed’ tag)
What does this mean ?
Of course, all sorts of bloggers who know how to play with html and embed video clips into their blog posts.
Version 3.0.0-b4
Release date: 23 June 2006
NEW: Updated Interface; Ad Insertion Improvements; Advanced Posting; New Image Dialogue; Font & Font Size
Plus, better stability because a number of important bugs have been fixed !
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Reporting from the Supernova conference on a session featuring new Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, JOHO author David W. offers us a glimpse of the growing disconnect between nimble connection-and-interaction oriented enterprise software and the increasingly heavy "electronic concrete" still on offer by SAP and CRM suppliers, generally.
Have I ever told you the one about becoming a prisoner of a company’s electronic, CRM-friendly business process ?
The new CEO of Sun says that some workloads are not outpacing Moore’s Law — SAP, CRM, for example — and Sun is not going to chase those applications. Sun wants to find the apps that need more hw.
He says 100% of companies want the tech that will let them connect with their customers. So Sun has to pick and choose.
The companies that look at IT as a cost center are not as important to Sun as companies that look at IT as a way of growing their business.
David W.’s concise summary of the Supernova session ?
What’s the core R&D for Sun? "The era of custom hardware is on its way out." Make sure that every device that connects to the network can interact with it.
Tags: electronic concrete, interactivity, interoperability, work design
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I was just watching my girlfriend play with the remote as she programmed the times for recording her favourite Food Network shows (yes, we eat too well, if that’s possible, thanks for asking 
and …
… there was an announcement about becoming a "Food Network Insider".
It strikes me that in this over-crowded, media-saturated world, a current response designed to attract people is to offer them the possibility of being an "Insider" .. the cool one who gets past the velvet rope at the "in" bar.
I am willing to bet that soon it will be cooler to be the "outsider", the one out on the edge, the non-conformist, the skeptic, the one who doesn’t necessarily join in with what everyone else is doing.
I’m sure that’s already the case, actually.
From a NY Times article detailing that harsh, unauthorized interrogation techniques were used by US forces in May 2004, long after approval of the use of such techniques was rescinded.
20 inches wide … hold your hands that far apart, go ahead.
The whole article is here.
Only vaguely, probably. Bruce’s post over at theriverblog the day after Stephen Colbert’s bravura performance at the White House Press Correspondent’s Dinner is so history now. Just a little plink in a big tub o’ shit.
I find it useful to remember that it was only 46 or 47 days ago.
Three days after the performance Joan Walsh wrote a piece for Salon.com titled "Making Colbert Go Away". Seems to me to have worked.
Over the past three or four years I’ve wondered why we haven’t seen much cultural response to our abysmal government. Shocked into silence after 9/11. Afraid to criticize. Whatever. Out here on the Web, we’ve been laboring, pushing, pulling, trying to make it happen. Amusing ourselves if nothing else. Now, in the culture at large, it seems it’s finally starting to happen. Thank you, Stephen Colbert
.
Tags: Stephen Colbert, Numbing of the American Mind, mighty wurlitzer, fuck
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… a blog written by one of my favourite musicians … a person whom I believe is a provocative eclectic thinker and artist.
In fact, his performance at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver about 18 months ago or so was the next-to-last concert I have attended, the last being Elvis Costello (interestingly enough, the Elvis Costello Home Page is being transformed into an Elvis Costello Wiki).
The blog’s title is simple:
Zack Exley has an interesting article up on the Huffington Post blog setting out why he thinks the blogosphere is in the process of being subsumed by The Establishment / Mainstream Media, and why he thinks the hard work is just now starting .. the hard work that will prove, or not, the long-term staying power and possible, potential impact of hyperlinks, connected minds and social and political activism.
In some of the blog networks I have frequented, this issue has been a source of questioning and conversation … and some practical initiatives … over the past couple of years.
I wrote a bit about it a couple of days ago, suggesting it will be interesting to watch if Microsoft can come up with a replacement act. If they do, no doubt some sort of before-and-after comparisons will be made .. maybe even metrics ? After all, conventional wisdom suggests "what can’t be measured can’t be managed"
How do I make that silly emoticon bigger and glowing ?
Hugh Macleod nails the metrics issue for me. I’m afraid I’m in the same boat as he.
Doc Searls on Robert Scoble’s recent departure from Microsoft:
One sad thing for Microsoft about losing Scoble was that they couldn’t pay him what he was worth to the company, which will remain incalculably large — even after he’s gone. In fact, there is no HR metric for figuring the worth of a worker like Scoble, whose value to Microsoft was due more to his work outside the company’s walls than inside them. Ironically, Robert Scoble may turn out to have been the most human resource Microsoft ever had.
Their loss, most definitely.
I like Microsoft. I’d go work for them, if they were ever short of a few disruptive bloggers, and the price was very, very right. I doubt they would hire me, though. My days of being governed by HR metrics are long gone.
Tags: Scoble, Gaping Void, measure and manage, metrics, what ?
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Via the Worldblu blog. I don’t know if it is still accessible (I’ll try later - update: it is).
I’m fond of suggesting that the phrase "command-and-control" should be considered alongside the phrase "champion-and-channel", which I believe is what good leaders do more often than command.
Thursday, January 19, 2006 08:19 pm
“DOWN WITH HIERARCHIES” – THE BBC’S BRILLANT PODCASTI love this! Check it out – I get the BBC’s podcasts delivered into my iTunes so I can listen on my iPod to the latest new, ideas, etc. Today they had one of the best programs I’ve ever heard about why command-and-control, hierarchy-laden organizations are falling flat. The program was called, “Down with Hierarchies” and it features world-class thinkers and practitioners supporting ideas like organizational democracy.
The program is about 30 minutes long and featured Gerard Fairtlough and his new book entitled, "The Three Ways of Getting Things Done: Hierarchy, Heterarchy and Responsible Autonomy in Organizations." The program also highlighted Ricardo Semler, Dee Hock, Peter Drucker, and more. Brilliantly done.
To access the program through the BBC Radio website, click here. Once on that page, click in the box that says, “Listen Again” and it will bring up the program. The show starts about a minute in. Enjoy!
Tags: BBC, Fairtlough, hierarchy, wirearchy
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… titled Rove’s Pass: A Window On The Real World is clearly thought out and written … and chilling.
Go read it now .. the excerpt below is the concluding paragraph (I split into two for emphasis).
Make no mistake: it will be hard, even now, to defeat a party that believes it has a special dispensation from God to lie and cheat because God wants it to keep power. Losing to this party again is unthinkable–but it can’t be. We have to think it, and let the thought of the meaning and consequences of that defeat inspire our greatest efforts.
Otherwise, all we will be left with is a slim doomsday consolation: my apologies to the penguins and the polar bears, but an electorate so stupid as to be taken in again by these terminally greedy aliens among us will get what it deserves and deserve exactly what it gets.
Tags: Rove, corruption, raw power, Machiavelli, government you deserve
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A follow-up to David Weinberger’s original post announcing a session at Berkman featuring Traci Fenton.
Evidently she cites the work of .. well, see below .. well-know OD thinkers and practitioners as the genesis of the idea.
Well … imo, mostly ho-hum. As a longtime OD practitioner, and with many friends and acquaintances in this field in several countries on at least three continents, may I say that with respect to hyperlinks and electronicised information systems that people use to communicate and sometimes collaborate .. yes there will be complexity added to the process of effectiveness in organizations, and yes, hyperlinks can and sometimes do subvert hierarchy (a la Weinberger).
Many OD consultants know a fair bit about Semler’s leadership of Semco and the structures and dynamics it has engendered, the earlier Saturn environment, self-directed work teams, socio-technical work systems, Barry Oshry’s work on power in social systems, the relative looseness and fluidity of smaller organization, Participative Work Design (Emery & Trist), Weisbord’s Productive Workplaces: Organizing And Managing For Meaning, Dignity and Community, Zuboff’s seminal study of pulp & paper factory workers chronicled in her book In The Age of The Smart Machine: the Future Of Work And Power, Elliott Jacque’s stratification methodologies according to time-span of decision-making, and so on. Another practical look at the emerging possibilities for the democratization of the workplace / organization can be found in Thomas Malone’s recent book The Future Of Work. Seriously, I could go on …
But (imo … an important caveat, to be sure) not very much has changed over the past 30 years. I believe I could make an argument that hierarchy has actually increased its grip in many instances over the past five years. In saying that, I am consciously remembering David W’s various statements about how hyperlinks and digitally-connected environments can cut the slack out of interactions between people … in my thinking I can extrapolate to mean that thanks to what we can observe today about the interaction between employees and employees, and employees and customers, and employees and customers in relation to senior managers and executives, a light can be shone on the relative lack of democracy in most organizations today.
Part of the way down in David’s post he reports that in response to a comment by David Isenberg: "David Isenberg points out that the managers at GE (for example) get paid disproportionately high. How does this growing gap fit with the idea of democratic organization?" … Traci responds thus: "Traci says that people are rebelling against this."
Of course they are, Traci .. and many have been for quite a while now … AND many unions have been busted, and wages have been lowered, and work has been offshored, and many people are scared shitless of losing their jobs, etc. Also … see Harold Leavitt’s Top Down: Why Hierarchies Are Here to Stay and How to Manage Them More Effectively.
You know, I’d really really like to be a bit less cynical about this, as I was empassioned for A LONG TIME by the possibilities for enlightened leadership and healthy, respectful workplaces as good examples of what productive social systems can accomplish, and the additions they can offer to people’s well-being and lives. In fact, I made a previous career out of that passion, and in my mind the tag line of this blog still demonstrates my healthy interest in the issues. But (and ?), go look at David’s paraphrased (his term) reporting on the session. As I riffed through it, what came to mind and stayed … plus ca change .. etc. I’d like to believe this is more than another OD consultant trying to develop interest in what Marshall McLuhan called "management clichés" (in a wonderful book titled McLuhan For Managers: New Tools For New Thinking, by Derrick de Kerckhove and Mark Federman), something I certainly could be accused of were I more organized and more assertive … or just did more marketing of some of the workshops I’ve designed, developed and delivered regarding "wirearchy".
But no doubt hyperlinks and collaborative social software add an interesting set of new flavours into the mix .. after all, if "knowledge is power" is true, then … (see previous posts on knowledge and power and "archy" and "wired" and wirearchy and job evaluation and competency profiling and knowledge management and work processes and process design, and … I’m all for building a movement towards more and more humanistic, sensible and effective workplaces, if that is where Worldblu is going or ends up.
As an aside, thanks to an invitation from Euan Semple, I was privileged to attend an LIFT salon a couple of years ago on the subject of hierarchy and the less mature (it was two years ago, after all) emerging hyperlinked working environment, where I met both Arie de Geus (The Living Company) and Gerard Fairtlough (cited below in the report on Traci’s session), who subsequently put out a book on hierarchy titled The Three Ways Of Getting Things Done: Hierarchy, Heterarchy And Responsible Autonomy. At the salon, he told us that the book’s working title at that time was Hierarchy: Just Another Bad Habit ? … which I like better
Traci Fenton, founder of WorldBlu.com, is giving a Berkman lunchtime talk about organizational democracy. Excellent turnout, especially for the most beautiful day of the year. I’m especially glad to see that Traci has drawn first-timers, from union reps to workplace managers, in addition to the usual Berkpeople. [I'm paraphrasing throughout this post. As always.]
She says: In a democratic workplace, people get to decide which projects they work on and have access to the financial info about the company. This is the case at the GE Durham plant —150 employees and one manager. They make jet engines. All future GE plants will also use a democratic working style.
Organizational democracy = "democratic principles applied to a business context." She cites Drucker, Wheatley, Senge, Hock, Semler, Collins, Fairtlough and Bower as sources of the idea. It’s not about everyone voting but everyone having a voice. It’s about operating out of freedom, not fear. Peer-to-peer, not paternalism. Humility and resolve vs. ego. Transparency vs. secrecy. Fluid networks, not hierarchy. It can become the norm, she says.
Tags: work, wired workplaces, Valdis Krebs, Orgnet, Karen Stephenson, Netform, hierarchy, wirearchy
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"archy" … organizing and/or governing principle (as in architecture, monarchy (rule of one), oligarchy (rule of powerful few), matriarchy (rule of maternal), etc.
"wired" … the state of being surrounded by, and engaged with, activities (work, life, shopping, viewing) encoded in or supported by electronic information systems that deliver or enable various types of interactions, between people and people or people and organizations.
"Wirearchy" … an emerging principle that suggests a two way flow of power and authority, based on trust, credibility, knowledge and a focus on results .. enabled by interconnected people and technology.
Examples …
1. The growing influence of blogs, podcasts, video clips streamed from the Web, photo-sharing, social media platforms, the use of hyperlinks to allow people to view and share other pieces of (sometimes, not always) pertinent and relevant information of interest to them
2. The influence of said ’social media’ on traditional forms of communication such as broadcast television, institutionalized journalism, political lobbying and citizen representation
3. The growth of citizen journalism
4. The use of blogs, podcasts and streaming video in educational settings
5. The growing realization that exchanges of information, opinion and financial support via the Web supplements or circumvents the ‘official’ stories in which established power structures are vested.
6. The continuing growth of hyperlinked-enabled business logic and infrastructure, most notably eBay.
The next area to watch, in my opinion, is organizational life, processes and structures. The possibilities offered by hyperlinked infrastructure with respect to purposeful sharing of useful information, and the weaving of this into increasingly productive collaboration, will sharpen the issues that have all too often been the subject of rhetoric by organizational leaders about culture, innovation and focus on customers.
Here’s an example of the quickening, growing realization that this is an area of latent potential. Via David Weinberger’s JOHO, I found this announcement of Worldblu, a conference on the core issues of organizational democracy. exploring this of course begs the issue of power, most notably the positional power of organizational hierarchy on which most leaders depend for enacting an organization’s purpose, vision and values.
Given the accelerating retirement of Baby Boomer digital immigrants, and the growing influx to organizations of digital natives … the next decade should be an interesting one.
I’m betting that the field of eOD will grow significantly (eOD = electronic organizational development).
WHAT IS ORGANIZATIONAL DEMOCRACY?
Organizational democracy is freedom within a business framework.
It is both an rganizational strategy for companies and a leadership style. It is achieved when a company uses the principles of democracy to design the way it operates daily, cultivating a company that enhances employee potential, thereby achieving its business goals and positively impacting the community.
Democratic Design + Freedom-Centered Leadership =A Democratic Company
The term democracy comes from the Greek words demos, “the people,” and kratein, “to rule.” The essence of democracy is the concept that people have the power and ability to shape their lives and their future both individually and collectively. Organizational democracy acknowledges that democracy should not, and cannot, be limited to the political sphere alone but can also be extended to companies – with effective, empowering, and profitable results.
Update: Candidia Cruickshanks thinks organizational democracy is silly. For the record, i agree with her that it’s not likely to happen much in my lifetime, and if it does to any extent at all, it will be in the rare organization where the other C-level hierarchs suffer the leadership of a person who adheres to quaint notions of Minim-like nobless oblige, or in the even more rare case there will be some enlightened entrepreneur who really belives in her or his talent … note that there’s still a possessive of sorts to “her” or “his”.
Tags: organizational structures, hierarchy, wirearchy
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Here’s a blog post outlining some issues on which I have recently worked … the work I was involved in is cited in the bottom half of the post.
It’s really just a way for me to acknowledge to myself and my colleagues that the research and analysis we carried out was effective and essentially accurate … or at least that a similar conclusion was reached by some specialists in the field.
……………………………………….. ………………………………………………
The recent Banff World Television Festival 2006 featured a session from the author of Desperate Networks and the release of a "green paper" titled The Future Of Television by the Nordicity Group, in which the consulting group suggested that the traditional television networks still had some advantages in terms of the distribution of the content being broadcast.
Here’s a report on the Nordicity green paper via the Globe and Mail.
Web not seen supplanting TV any time soon
GRANT ROBERTSONThe Internet poses a smaller threat to Canadian television broadcasters than many of the industry’s doomsayers believe because the Web is still "an expensive way" to distribute TV shows compared with cable and satellite feeds, a new report says.
The report, which will be debated Wednesday at one of the industry’s largest annual gatherings in Banff, Alta., comes six months after a study by IBM titled "The end of television as we know it" predicted Internet distribution would be a death knell for broadcasters.
In the new paper — called "The Future of Television" — the Nordicity Group Ltd. says the risk posed by the Internet may be overstated. Nordicity is a consulting firm specializing in policy and economic research for the TV sector.
Bandwidth costs associated with broadcasting over the Web, particularly in high-definition (HD) formats, remain considerably higher than the mass distribution offered by cable and satellite TV, the report says.
Internet broadcasts also reach smaller audiences for advertisers than traditional, "linear" television can, though the Web is better at reaching specific types of viewers, it says.
"We accept that on-demand television is threatening the linear model . . . but we argue that the end of linear television is hardly nigh," the report says, adding that high-definition television "would tax [the Web's] capacity."
Happily, we can report that we reached the same conclusion in a recent (May 1, 2006) report to the Canadian Culture Online department of Canadian Heritage. You could argue that we took a different angle with which to approach the issue, and perhaps have made slightly different observations or general recommendations as to how the core issues might be addressed.
Nevertheless, the relevant paragraphs of our report, outlining the results of the research, set out very similar conclusions in essentially the same level of detail as the work by Nordicity.
Enterprises in the telecommunications and media industries are now engaged in a fight to the death; while it seems probable that co-opetition is a more realistic and more profitable approach. We note also that while television over IP promises to offer the same services at reduced cost levels, the traditional methods of content distribution still have an attractive future before them. The (possible) solution: beginning by identifying niche markets in which television over IP offers services not available anywhere else. Evidently, the new distributors should from time to time refrain from the impulse or desire to introduce new services too early. Also (and we cannot say it often enough) it is always and forever necessary to validate that the services offered are the services that customers want.
At the same time, according to the Gartner Group, television over the Internet (IPTV) will not be profitable over the short term. In effect, if the number of members should multiply by 11 times between 2005 and 2010 to attain 16.7 million customers, the profits realized by the telecom operators will only be 8.9 times greater than in 2005. And the growth of membership is tending to slow down, with a growth rate of 134.5% between 2004 and 2005 but only projected at 22.4% between 2009 and 2010.
IPTV may have difficulty becoming a major source of revenue for the telecommunications companies in the next five years, states Gartner. In effect, according to the consulting firm, the suppliers should limit the initial levels of fees to battle against the offers from pay TV and other offers like TNT (digital satellite TV), or in the cases where a member can receive a bundled package of quality programming.
In spite of all this, these battles must be fought. In effect, while the profits over the short and medium term are at best projected to be modest, the suppliers of access and content cannot afford to miss the game. Those who are expecting too much will risk reducing their chances to be key long-term players of the infotainment distributed over the Internet. IPTV is not a simple, unique service but "a new distribution platform on which various services can eventually be created and offered”.
Tags: IPtv, traditional television, bandwidth costs, net neutrality, competition
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A bit more on / from Scoble via Beet.tv.
Here’s the video clip of Scoble’s comments on video blogging.
One of the coolest things about Vloggercon is all the digital and video cameras. Imagine 400 vloggers with everything from tiny digital cameras to professional camcorders. What a scene. Scoble is very proud of his Sony HD. (Beet.TV uses the Panasonic DVC 30)
In his comments, he frames a perspective on the power and value of video blogs in the business world.
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Anybody that will assiduously follow whatever and whomever Microsoft uses to replace Robert Scoble as an evangelist and *customer-listener* over the next year or so … and develops metrics to chronicle whatever may happen … will arguably have one of the most useful, and potentially most famous, case studies of the impact of effective externally-oriented blogging on the profile and perception of a high-profile technology company.
He’s certainly done an awful lot for Microsoft in terms of positive relations with people and (potentially) customers.
Maybe Microsoft will make an offer to Dave Winer ? That would be interesting !
Many people have reported on Scoble’s departure. The source I’ve used below is Mathew Ingram, to whom I offer thanks for his steady, balanced (imo), reliable and stimulating technology reporting.
The Scobleizer calls it quits — updated
Posted by Mathew Ingram @ 12:09 am on Sunday 11 June 2006According to Tom Foremski at SiliconValleyWatcher and Andy Plesser at Beet.tv, the guy who is arguably Microsoft’s most famous person — at least as far as the blogosphere is concerned — is leaving the company. Robert Scoble, also known as the Scobleizer, is reportedly heading to podtech.net to be its corporate evangelist. Tom says that Scoble wasn’t happy working at Mister Softee, in part because they weren’t interested in paying for all his travels to conferences.
[Snip ...]
Update:
Scoble has posted a confirmation of his move, and goes on to counter the rumours about concerns over his travel budget and lack of support from Microsoft — totally not true, he says. He also says they “moved heaven and earth” to keep him happy, but he decided to make the move anyway. “It’s a rapidly-evolving part of my life,” he says. “I just made this decision and it got out before I was completely ready to talk about it.”
Best of luck to him.
Tags: Scoble, Microsoft, evangelizing, listening to customers
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Just in case y’all think I believe hyperlinks and information and good intentions are going to magically change the world … they may help to change the world, over time .. but it sure as shooting ain’t gonna be magic.
I ran across this (excerpt below) whilst researching the recent story that the blogger Armando (who posted regularly at the dailyKos blog) had been outed as a corporate attorney by trolls, and the subsequent spate of people diving for cover, or noting that more and more frequently now corporations and recruiters use Google to make sure that some candidate or other has never uttered a word in vain against "the system" (for example).
The longish excerpt offers a pantload of examples of why the desire to control and have people fit in is alive and well, and raging on into the future. It is in response to the emerging realization that people are posting much about themselves on social web spaces like Myspace and Facebook
What price freedom, principles and basic human dignity .. such as the right to an opinion of one’s , and the freedom of self-expression in a context essentially totally removed from a workplace. Do employers "own" you ? Always a good question to ask yourself.
Melanie Deitch, director of marketing at Facebook, agreed, saying students should take advantage of the site’s privacy settings and should be smart about what they post.
But it is not clear whether many students are following the advice. "I think students have the view that Facebook is their space and that the adult world doesn’t know about it," said Mark W. Smith, assistant vice chancellor and director of the career center at Washington University in St. Louis. "But the adult world is starting to come in."
Personally speaking, the price I’ve paid has been high. Having paid it, I will never let someone else own my soul … and I have no compunctions about not hiding myself behind a pseudonym.
Thanks to the blog driftglass. Here’s the full piece, titled "Welcome to the Jungle". And please remember, Pleasantville may be just around the corner .. next stop light, turn left, keep driving.
……………
At a gig I worked some years ago at a fairly profitable shop, the Big Squeeze came shortly after were we acquired by a cabal of white, Christian good-‘ol-boys from People’s Republic of Texas.
Even though the bottom line was sound, there immediately came a round of purges and job “reclassifications” that were very clearly calibrated to get rid of as many women and minorities as possible, and make sure all the survivors had to effectively double their workload without complaint or compensation, or be sacked.
In case you’ve spent the days of your life in an “Altered States” isolation tank – and therefore have also spent you nights gamboling through your local zoo, hunting gazelle – even in this Year of our Lord 2006, there are still a staggering number of men – mostly men – in senior management who believe that their employees are their property, to be berated, groped, elevated and disposed of at a whim.
Who believe in their shabby break-room-after-hours rights of “droit du seigneur” and “jus primae noctis” as fiercely as any medieval Lord.
Add in that smugly-grinning-pervert-Jim Bakker-ish dogma of White Male Fundamentalist Privilege and the results are especially revolting.
And ain’t it just great that these Anointed Ones run the country now!
Anyway, there was a pretty clear line of demarcation when it came to the reaction of us worker bees. Needless to say everyone was pissed and dismayed and sickened that this particular disease had infected our relatively-happy little isle, but for those of who had stocked up a certain number of professional years, this came as no big surprise; for those who had not, it shocked the Hell out of them.
“B-b-but they can’t do that! You can’t just fire someone for no reason at all!”
Oh little darlin’, how it saddened me to see you reach that moment of bitter realization about how the Real World really works.
To see something charming and tender die in your eyes when you were forced to confront the fact that, often, the Bad Guys win, and all of your eloquence, logic and undeniable rightness makes as righteous a sword-and-shield combo when pitted against pinstrip Neanderthals with power as an icicle and a wad of Kleenex in a blast furnace.
But the trick is not to abandon your heart. Don’t turn your back on your ideals.
No, quite the opposite: realize that your ideals are not laws of physics that need no cops and courts because they cannot be broken (“Sir please put down the Perpetual Motion machine and step away from the Laws of Thermodynamics!”), or some endowment from God that can’t be smacked right out of your hands and regifted into the corporate shredder by thugs with money and clout.
Instead they are values and principles that are constantly under siege by people who believe that money or skin color or political party or faith renders them above such petty considerations.
It is a blessing to have been taught that tolerance, respect, civil rights and privacy are basic virtues, but you was robbed, darlin’, if you were told that you would enjoy these things forever at no cost and without struggle.
The world is full of busy men with money and power working every day to strip-mine those values off the face of the Earth and replace them with a tidy, Flag-and-Bible-driven Corporate Christian state free of any vestigial traces of genuine democracy.
And oh my yes, they will fuck with you. For their own reasons or for no reason at all, your life will be tampered with, prodded and scarred by people who are running an agenda that is loathsome to you, and antithetical to every value your parents taught you to adore.
And sometimes they win. Outright. And no cavalry shows up in the third reel to save the fort.
I hate to break it to you kid, but we’re the cavalry.
Just you and me.
And the loons who have traded their Canadian money back for Yankee dollars to donate to the cash-strapped casinos at Yearly Kos. And the Atriots. And the Soccer Brigades who have temporarily taken over Steve and Jen’s place. And the ramblers at Shakepeare’s Sis. And all the rest of the troublemakers, too numerous to mention.
And millions and millions and millions of others.
As a friend used to tell me back when my flesh was more tender than it is now, “Remember, in the end there is no justice. There’s just us.”
The good news is, like it or not, from drowned polar bears to footprints on the Moon, the world really is what we make it. But if we want it to be a safe harbor for tolerance, respect, civil rights and privacy, then we have to hew that shape into our national bedrock and keep dredging the mud out, in spite of fear and failure.
The better news is, most of the hard work has already been done by the generations and legions of patriots and anonymous citizens, veterans and school teachers, working folks, pamphleteers and protesters that preceded us. We’re just the swing shift, kiddo: newbies clocking in on a job that great men and women began long, long ago.So don’t be afraid to pick whatever tiny corner of the banner you can lift and help the friends of liberty to carry it forward — even just a little — but for goodness sake remember that you’re in a for-real fight in a digital age.
Tags: connectivity, principles, freedom of speech, hyperlinks, power, wirearchy
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From the same article, cited directly below:
"Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense," Brin said
Tags: less evil ?
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Via the Toronto Globe and Mail …
Brin says Google compromised principles
TED BRIDIS
Associated PressWASHINGTON — Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged the dominant Internet company has compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands. He said Google is wrestling to make the deal work before deciding whether to reverse course.
Meeting with reporters near Capitol Hill, Brin said Google had agreed to the censorship demands only after Chinese authorities blocked its service in that country. Google’s rivals accommodated the same demands — which Brin described as "a set of rules that we weren’t comfortable with" — without international criticism, he said.
"We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference," Brin said.
[Snip ...]
Brin said Google is trying to improve its censored search service, Google.cn, before deciding whether to reverse course. He said virtually all the company’s customers in China use the non-censored service.
"It’s perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say, ‘Look, we’re going to stand by the principle against censorship and we won’t actually operate there.’ That’s an alternate path," Brin said.
"It’s not where we chose to go right now, but I can sort of see how people came to different conclusions about doing the right thing."
Tags: Google, evil, do no evil, organize world’s information, bad man, dishonest, hypocrisy
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Regardless of what I have been told, repeatedly, endlessly and obsessively … life (and blogging) are not about money. Money is a part of life, and (most of us) we need to work, or do something, to get it. Money is not the purpose of life (mine at least), but is indeed an integral part of the means to an end … survival and beyond that ways to begin, participate in and accomplish things that interest me and that I find important.
With respect to blogging and the ‘monetization of content" from personal publishers, someone may crack the code, the code being that people believe that material that is created … the output of someone’s creative energy and effort … has value to someone for x or y reasons.
That is the gist of the notion of the Gift Economy .. in the absence of formal structured points of friction where we can exchange legal tender for ’something", we have only the option to "give" it to someone, whilst citing much of the traditional lore about the altruism of giving and its core role in reciprocity and community.
Well .. we live in a pretty frickin’ pragmatic world, us of the first world. Yet, just yet .. what is ‘of value’ to me may not be the same as what is ‘of value’ to you. And therein lies what I believe will be very interesting ground for a large, amorphous and widespread socio-economic experiment in years to come.
Here’s Frank Paynter’s delicious take, titled Three Bags Full, on this notion.
(The above excerpt is not entirely without intention. It perhaps illustrates two things: one, that personal creative choices will lead us to vocational opportunities that are unique and personal, viz “Cooking Without Looking;” and, two, that this thing called blogging is its own reward, comprising readers and writers, linkage and thinkage… and sometimes - yes - stinkage, but not today, neither in this post’s origins nor in the novel in progress that I’ve linked here… we have an opportunity to help each other carry the canoe on that long portage, and sometimes there will be blueberries and sometimes there will be biting insects, but all in all, when the loon calls and the sun sets on the lake beyond, there are no simple answers, rather there are all these complicated relationships and quel domage that we find so many of them parsed into fifty minute segments with an IRC back channel).
Tags: listics, blogging, money, long tail, stinkage, gibberish, value, us weirdos
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… and does so rather well, I think.
The concluding paragraph from the rebuttal is excerpted below, and in my opinion points to the large, daunting and exciting challenge ahead for us all,
In a first world (the relatively affluent western world wherein people have computers and there is widespread access to the Internet) … a world that has been streamlined and made efficient to bring us material affluence that allows us to stuff our garages and basements to bursting while millions in the third world suffer and die for want of clean water and effective basic medicines … we face a situation where access to information and the ability to connect and communicate can (and may) make possible real changes to oligarchic or plutocratic control of benumbed befuddled people who are afraid of somehow "not having enough".
It is said that "knowledge is power".
Via digby’s Hullabaloo, a tidbit on the businessification of everything carried by the story of a somewhat repentant Republican whose jail term offered him time to reflect.
But hey, there are MBA’s and CEO’s in the White House, right.
I am ripping and re-publishing the complete (but short) post by David Weinberger from the blog JOHO which points out how ridiculous is the attempt by the Canadian Copyright Legislation Agency to impose a lame and uninformed policy.
And as David points out, Seth Finkelstein caught some goofy lawyerly language which essentially says "We say you can’t copy and/or link to anything if we don’t like what you say".
Captain Copyright looks like it’s a joke, but it’s not. The site, set up by the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, suggests lame activities for teachers eager to inculcate copyright totalitarianism in their young charges. It’s unintentionally hilarious. (And it’s been slashdotted.)
Seth Finkelstein, on a mailing list, points to this bit from the site’s own page on copyrights and permissions:
"Permission is expressly granted to any person who wishes to place a link in his or her own website to www.accesscopyright.ca or any of its pages with the following exception: in order to protect the moral rights associated with this site, permission to link is explicitly withheld from any website the contents of which may, in the opinion of the Access Copyright, be damaging or cause harm to the reputation of Access Copyright. Specifically, permission to link is explicitly withheld from sites featuring pornographic, racist or homophobic content. If you link to or otherwise include www.captaincopyright.ca on your website, please let us know."
Ok, so how about this: Access Copyright is a fascist organization.
PS: My favorite bit from that page: "You are not permitted to copy or cut from any page or its HTML source code to the Windows™ clipboard (or equivalent on other platforms) onto any other website." That’s just plain weird
As the slashdot item points out … "In Canadian law it is incorrect to download a song unless you pay for it. They also neglect to mention that Canadians pay a tax on blank media that is meant to compensate artists for downloads."
One point with which I might quibble. I’m not sure that Access Copyright is a fascist organization per se, but one which - in attempting to enact its mandate - promotes fascist policy, perhaps through general ideology and lack of critical thinking.
I’m prepared to acknowledge there may not be much difference.
Tags: general stupidity, fascism, copyright, intellectual property, Creative Commons, JOHO
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Via the New York Times (membership registration required for access to the article)…
House Backs Telecom Bill Favoring Phone Companies
By STEPHEN LABATON
June 9, 2006
WASHINGTON, June 8 — The House of Representatives approved the most extensive telecommunications legislation in a decade on Thursday, largely ratifying the policy agenda of the nation’s largest telephone companies.The bill passed by a lopsided vote of 321 to 101.
Supporters of the legislation said it would promote competition and lower costs by enabling the telephone companies to offer bundled packages of video, telephone, broadband, wireless and mobile phone services in new markets. They said the legislation was an important antidote to rapidly rising cable television subscription rates.
But even as the House took up the measure on Thursday, the political action had already swung to the Senate, which has been peppered by lobbyists and executives from many major telecommunications companies in recent days as it prepares to draft its own version.
The prospects there are uncertain.
Tags: netneutrality, competition, telcos, cablecos, control, wirearchy
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It’s funny how things always seem to come up in bunches, especially in the world of blogging.
Via Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0
The “social” media revolution has everyone letting it all hang out all over the “open web,” so it should come as no surprise that the NSA is taking advantage of all this voluntary disclosure of personal information:
“I AM continually shocked and appalled at the details people voluntarily post online about themselves.” So says Jon Callas, chief security officer at PGP, a Silicon Valley-based maker of encryption software. He is far from alone in noticing that fast-growing social networking websites such as MySpace and Friendster are a snoop’s dream.New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon’s National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming “semantic web” championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.
Looks like News Corp isn’t the only one to see the data mining potential.
There is a privacy backlash coming that is going to throw cold water on MySpace, Web 2.0, and all the related frothing over anything with the word “social.”
Tags: privacy, invasion, social architecture, resistance, wirearchy
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.. is continuing, it seems.
David Weinberger reporting from The Annenberg Centre’s conference on hyperlinking and society:
Jay Rosen says that returns to Raymond Williams who says in Culture and Society:
There are no masses. There are only ways of seeing people as masses. People are unique, but you can address them as a mass.
The Age of Mass Media, says Jay, is about the art and science of seeing people as masses. But today all these ways of seeing people as masses are coming apart. They’re not as effective. People don’t stand for it any more. So now we have to learn how to see people not as a mass but as a public, a community, knowledge producers.
Links connect us horizontally, not just up and down. "All the professions that specialize in seeing people as masses, or as the market, are having to contend with a world where horizontal communication is so much more effective." Often, if people can meet each other, they don’t need the mass world, says Jay.
And, as a blogger, he says, through the "magic of links" he was able to talk about the press without having to go through the filter of the press. "So, for me linking has been powerfully associated with intellectual freedom.
"
Tags: horizontality, hyperlinks, hyperlinking, wirearchy
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Via CNN.com
House passes telecommunications bill
‘Net neutrality’ dominates debate
WASHINGTON (AP) — Legislation to open cable TV markets to more competition, possibly saving consumers hundreds of dollars a year, passed the House Thursday.
The biggest telecommunications legislation in a decade, approved 321-101, would make it easier for telephone companies to enter the subscription television market. A national franchise process would replace the current system where potential providers must negotiate contracts municipality by municipality, sometimes taking months and years.
Tags: net neutrality, competition, television over IP
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Further to our recent post on content creators (also mentioning Henry Jenkins), here’s a link to another video clip in which he gazes wistfully into the future. He is suggesting that the new tools, and the new interactivity, will lead to more serious human activity that will impact on society and various aspects of our lives in more profound ways.
From what I have seen in the blogging world, I would agree. Jenkins is talking about the maturing of the use of a medium towards creating usefulness, impact and meaning.
See the previous ThermoSAT post "Is The Internet A New Medium ? … which is a republishing of a post I wrote about 18 months ago titled The Medium Is The Meaning That We Consume and Create".
MIT’s Henry Jenkins, who heads the Comparative Media Studies Program, believes that what we’re seeing with young people is just the beginning of a new way of communicating. He calls what’s happening at social networking sites “playing with information,” and says that the MySpace generation will grow up to use those valuable tools to have a profound impact on how they communicate about more important things like politics.
We also believe that young people will soon produce thoughtful, powerful content that will impact society. It’s an inevitable progression – and we looking forward to seeing it.
Tags: content creation, digital generations, meaning, impact, wirearchy
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I believe it’s becoming clearer and clearer, though it’s been apparent in the blogosphere for a long time, in my opinion.
It started in a different galaxy, long ago … (no, wait .. that’s another story).
The Tofflers suggested in their books The Third Wave, Future Shock and PowerShift that the collective ‘we" would undergo and experience massive change and dislocation. So have many other futurists. There is a plethora of books (and movies, and other forms of information) dating back at least twenty years foretelling fundamental transformation .. of society, of economics, of social, physical and spiritual relationships.
In the meantime, much of the western world (at least) has continued on pretending that there would always be an incrementally better and more satisfying affluent middle-class life. And, indeed, for the most part there is some real truth to that notion, materially if not metaphysically.
And we have seen much change … in music, culture, lifestyles, information technology, media, and so on. It can be argued that one of the attractive core elements of ideology to many of the supporters of conservative politicians and governments has been the forestalling of more change … that somehow these ideologies and the laws and policies these conservative governments propose and support will help us get back to a stable period where men are men, women are women, everyone has and knows their place, and the trickle-down economy will keep the people who deserve to be in charge in their rightful place(s).
Many bloggers over the past few years have proudly proclaimed themselves members of the "reality-based community". You know, that one that recognizes that humans come in all colours of the rainbow, and all sizes, that you can’t cure gay-ness, that marijuana is a useful herb that’s been known to humans for thousands of years, that war after war doesn’t create peace but does make a few war profiteers rich and that keeping p[eople askeered of "other" people or ways is a good way to gin up wars … and so on and so on.
Some day the adults may get back in charge .. reality based adults who recognize that the world isn’t black or white, with us or agin’ us, and that the USA is just another nation and society (albeit a rich and powerful one), and not God’s chosen people. the concept of god would just not, on principle, choose one set of people living inside some lines on a map over others. Hesheit just would not.
Now evidently more and more people are beginning to clamor for some intelligent and aware people to represent and lead them, in different ways under a different, more inclusive and more humanistic policy. Someone like Al Gore, or maybe Howard dean … somebody that’s not crazy, arrogant and drunk on power, someone serious and responsible.
The problems and issues of modern western society are too complex and intractable to continue pretending that simple slogans and "it’s hard wurk" will keep people from noticing sheer incompetence and criminal negligence. But what to do when the conservative base may no longer hold the reins of power ? Will there be a real culture war ? Will those people who want to forestall further change, or roll back the clock with respect to womens’ and minority rights and make plutocracy-favouring tax cuts permanent . Will they accept that the world continues to change and evolve around them ?
I do not think they will go gracefully into that good night. I think that there is much discomfort and turmoil on the horizon. Welcome to Pleasantville, writ large.
Read more on this subject over at the Firedoglake blog:
They used to mock him. Now they’re giving him the shrieking orc treatment. The bedwetting team is scared. . . witless. . . of Al Gore and his new movie, An Inconvenient Truth (which you can pledge to see here).
Search for blog entries mentioning Al Gore at Technorati to see how HUGE the buzz is around him now. You’ll see a lot of cheering, enthusastic welcoming of Gore back to the public scene, mixed in with heaping septic mountains of flying wingnut feces. I could provide you with links to show how unhinged and terrified the right wing is of Gore, but I don’t link to them. You know the usual sites and suspects. Technorati will help you see what I’m talking about.
Tags: cultural transformation, power shift, class war, Al Gore, paradigms
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Noticed .. comments by reader Bionic on the Firedoglake blog:
I was tootling around yesterday looking for more information wrt the Toronto Terrorists, of particular interest to me since I live in Toronto. In fact, one of the men picked up in the sweep in 2001 worked at a 7/11 in my neighborhood, so I wanted to see if I recognized anyone.
I didn’t, but I did read some interesting things. Unfortunately, I can’t find the blog where I read this, but here’s the jist.
There has been a lot of talk about the 3 tons of fertilizer these guys bought both in terms of cost and danger.
Apparently the cost is about $1200. Not so expensive if you ask me. So I don’t think deep pockets from AlQaeda were necessary. The men are apparently a tribute band of terrorists.
The amount bought isn’t outrageous, if used for its stated purpose. I read that it would fertilize 50 to 70 acres. [Edit: I was not trying to imply that amount wouldn’t make a dangerous bomb, just that people can and do actually buy that amount, without nefarious purposes in mind.]
Since 2001, it is not made in Canada anymore. You have to import it from the Southern US. All large purchases of the stuff are tracked, so the government forces knew who had this.
In fact, I just read on the http://cbc.ca site that undercover agents sold them harmless chemicals that only looked like ammonium nitrate. So the visions of terrible damage that the government nipped in the bud, are just that — visions.
The 17 people arrested are all 25 or younger (mostly younger), except for a 30 yr old and 43 yr old. Several are protected by young offenders act because they are under 18. Two of them are already in jail (apparently they tried to smuggle guns into Canada).
I am not downplaying what these guys wanted to do, I am trying to point out that they were miles away from actually being able to do it.
They were tracked by security forces, sold fake goods by security forces and then stopped by security forces.
I have to admit I question the timing of the arrests. Stockwell “Doris” Day, the minister responsible is notorious in Canada for his truthy positions and political gaffes.
I would not have put it past him to pull the trigger on this on the order of, or as a favour for the government in the US.
Harper’s government is determined to remold Canada into a nation that the Religious right would be proud of. Making us all scared is just part of that.
Tags: terror in Canada, de-elect Harper, manufacturing fear
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Michelle Malkin is one of the clearest example of hate-mindedness (Yes, I know it’s not a word) on the Web today.
Comments found on Firedoglake blog:
DefJef says:
June 1st, 2006 at 6:36 pm
First they pollute the election process with corporate funding and financing of candidates making it all but impossible for John or Jane Q Citizen to run for national or statewide office. Campaign finance is very corrupt and non democratic.Then we have the multifaceted election fraud strategies which have been identified for that past 5 years and now with the RFKjr article in rolling stone it may get some MSM attention.. but unlikely. No democracy in elections.
The you have the perversion of the 4th estate. The MSM have been bought and owned by corporate america and support its agenda at every turn. Were it not for the blogs and some minor publications we would be in darkness worse than the middle ages as far as being informed about government’s behavior. Perversion of the truth at every turn.
Next you have the pay for play lobby system which only the big boy corporate players get to write legislation and make the laws safe for all they care to do in pursuit of profits including spoiling the environment… destroying the labor movement, safety in the workplace, and pork barrel spending which is unbelievable if it weren’t true.
These thieves have taken our votes and tossed them out, taken our rights and trampled them, logging our calls and keeping dossiers on everyone of us, and taken the lives of those who naively believed they were “fighting for America”.. but instead were dying for corporate american profits.
What do we have left of our democracy? That we can post to a blog.. and chat with a neighbor on the street?
Houston… we got a problem.
Tags: democracy is dying, vote rigging, vote fraud, stolen election
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The men in Washington who create and allow this (below) while muttering with clenched lips about "freedom" and "democracy" .. these men are mad.
Democracy … hehehe.